Julia J. Rucklidge, PhD is a Professor of Clinical Psychology in the School of Psychology, Speech, and Hearing at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, she did her undergraduate training in neurobiology at McGill University in Montreal, and her Master’s and PhD at the University of Calgary in clinical psychology followed by a two year post-doctoral fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. While in Alberta during her PhD studies, she first learned of people with mental illness benefiting from micronutrients. In 2000, she immigrated to New Zealand to take up her current position and teaches child clinical psychology as well as a course devoted to Mental Health and Nutrition, the only one of its kind in NZ. Over the last decade, her lab, Te Puna Toiora, has been running clinical trials investigating the role of broad-spectrum multinutrients in the treatment of mental illness, specifically ADHD, mood disorders, smoking, anxiety and stress associated with traumatic events, including earthquakes, floods and mass shootings. Julia has over 130 peer-reviewed publications and textbook contributions. She is regularly featured across social media, newspaper, radio, and TV and has given over 100 invited talks across the world on her work on nutrition and mental health. She is currently on the Executive Committee for the International Society of Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR.org). She was named in the top 100 Most Influential Women in New Zealand in both 2015 and 2018 and received the Ballin award in 2015 from the New Zealand Psychological Society for her service to clinical psychology. Her 2014 TEDx talk has been viewed over 1.5 million times.
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